In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttmann organised a sports competition involving World War II veterans with a spinal cord-related injury in Stoke Mandeville, England. Four years later, competitors from Holland joined the Games, and the international movement, now known as the Paralympic Movement, was born.
Olympic-style games for athletes with a disability were organised for the first time in Rome in 1960. In Toronto in 1976, other disability groups were added and the idea of merging together different disability groups for international sports competitions was born. In the same year, the first Paralympic Winter Games took place in Sweden.